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i printed some pdf sheet music online, then i punched 3 holes in the pages and put them in a binder.

some problems:

the sheet music droops to one side. is there a way to bind sheet music that is cheap (3 ring binder + 3 hole punch is cheap) and also allows you to easily add in more sheet music later (3 hole binder). i was looking at some binding options at staples, most were not cheap nor would you be able to easily add more pages later when needed. so what options do i have? and how do you organize your sheet music? and is it necessary to bind the sheet music?

I have seen these notebook systems in other places but seldom as cheap as these Staples products. Other styles of covers are available. There is a special punch to make your own pages, and the rings come in various diameters depending on how many pages you want to add.

I use plastic sleeves that have already holes and put them in a binder. Plastic sleeves work fine. Don't know about drooping, I always take the papers out if I start playing it. The binder sucks though

How do you mean "drooping"? Would reinforcing the punched holes help? You get those stickers that you stick around the holes which stiffens that area. If that's the issue then you only need to reinforce the top/bottom holes I guess, I haven't tried. I'm busy punching holes in my newly printed sheet music right now to put into a file.

I use four-hole ring binders (obviously with a four-hole punch). These give much better support at the very top and bottom of the pages and thus they don't droop. You can buy a four-hole punch quite cheaply (check them out on Amazon or similar) which will do the job. Another method is plastic spiral ring binding but you would need a machine and plastic binders for this which wouldn't be cheap and once used you cannot really take them apart or add pages.

I do wish sheet music publishers would use spiral bound on the thicker type of books as these never lay flat properly and I usually have to cut out pages and place in four-hole binders.

Here is what I did, it works great and is cheap (total about $20 USD).

Go to a hobby store and get a roll of cork, and cut it to size (You'll see what I mean in pic). Hang it on the wall above your keyboard. Then just get a box of push-pins and a box of paperclips. Use the pushpins to hang your music, and paperclip it together when you store it.

I store my PDF-printed music in manila folders, and just stack it with my regular books. I set this up a few months ago and it has been working great. I guess now that I think about it, though, it will only work if you have a digital piano up against a wall.

Here is what I did, it works great and is cheap (total about $20 USD).

Go to a hobby store and get a roll of cork, and cut it to size (You'll see what I mean in pic). Hang it on the wall above your keyboard. Then just get a box of push-pins and a box of paperclips. Use the pushpins to hang your music, and paperclip it together when you store it.

I store my PDF-printed music in manila folders, and just stack it with my regular books. I set this up a few months ago and it has been working great. I guess now that I think about it, though, it will only work if you have a digital piano up against a wall.

(couldn't get image rotated correctly)

Love the Metallica pic.

When I took singing lessons the teacher has us do something similar to this. We would tape all the pages together so the pianist could use it. It worked really well so that's what I started doing with all my music. Even if I had the book I would copy it (one for me and one for my piano teacher). It was much neater and easier to use than a book. Then I could keep all the current stuff I was working on in a small folder.

I mainly use the plastic sleeves as well. Another thing to do is to print/copy your music onto cardstock (60-65 lb works fine, you don't need 110 lb). It generally runs $10-15 for 250 sheets. Harder to move stuff around without leaving a blank sheet, but it doesn't droop and turns "crisper."

I bound all my A4 documents inclusive my sheet music in file maps with a Jalema clip: http://www.jalemaclip.com/ . And paper gets two holes and selfadhesive hole-reinforcing rings. Then between pieces a red A4 paper just for convenience.

It's easy to pull 50 sheets from one map and push it into another one somewhere in the middle without doing that one sheet at a time. So if you want to rearrange your sheet music or administration by big chunks later, it won't be a problem.

That's the biggest plus, i think.

Then the sheets don't droop out, because the rim of the bottom of the map is just about at the same level as the rim of the bottom of the papers.

And it's really cheap, heh.

Edit: and yes, it's really important to bind music for quick access. I had two teachers once who were very creative but had their sheet music at one pile. They always searched for a piece like 10 to 20 minutes, lmao.

Yes, 3-ring binders can be droopy, though I use one for all my random stuff and it sits on a Manhasset music stand (or "desk," as I guess it's officially called) bolted to my workstation. That seems to support everything fine in my application.

3-ring is nicely editable, of course, but the holes can interfere with the music in some PDF printouts and with a lot of handling can easily tear out. If you have a collection that is going to be fairly stable, and you don't want the clunky overhead of a binder, you might consider GBC. I use that for lots of things... it's those plastic combs, and they are cheap once you get the machine. They lay flat nicely, unlike clamping or glue methods, and are easy to zip off (non-destructively) and replace if you decide to add/delete/rearrange pages.

The 4 ring binder for holding plastic sleeves works great. Invest some time to get a binder which actually offers perfectly round rings, and not the office style 'rings' which in fact ar round only at the top (at the closing mechanism) but straight elsewhere (in the vertical to the spine for allowing to take up a higher amount of sleeves). If you need to turn the page for a more than 2 page sheet, only the perfectly ring shaped binder mechanism works fine. And it works really fine!

Then take care which plastic sleeves to go for. There are availabe slightly matt sleeves, or sleeves with a slightly roving textured surface. Also there are available thick ones, giving excellent support for important documents. But you can find perfectly transparent, unstructered ones, which are very thinn (with your paper sheets in you still obtain enough stability). It indeed took me a while to find them. Now guess what, they are the cheapest as well.

As books to often do not stay open, or I am finally playing only 7 out 43 songs from a book frequently, I made copies from my sheet books and now only work with my 4-ring binders: one with my 'recital' pieces, with the songs organized to appear one after another as I prefer to play them one after the other; another one with 'etude' pieces, which I should work on for practice and educational reasons but do not want to see them if in the mood to just play my concert for me; finally one with all the pieces which I already preselected for future playing.

Ok so here's what I did as a quick fix for my drooping issue. It seems to work fine. I just bought some of that double-sided mounting stickers, and had some small sheet metal lying around which I just cut and bent to size.